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Leaked documents reveal Russia's campaign to denigrate Ukraine and the EU

2024-09-18 07:30:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

A trove of leaks from a Russian disinformation campaign has highlighted how Moscow sought to smear Ukraine and the Western governments that support it, while simultaneously trying to boost support for extreme political parties. right in the European Union.

The documents — which were obtained by a European media consortium and shared with Radio Free Europe's Ukrainian investigative team, Schemes — reveal the internal operations of the Agency for Social Design, a Moscow-based company for which the United States they say he led the propaganda campaign at the behest of the Kremlin.

The campaign involved a diverse mix of memes (jokes), fake videos and government documents, as well as a network of online sites masquerading as genuine news portals across Europe to spread fake news in order to undermine Western support for Ukraine, after Russia began its full invasion in February 2022.

Data shows that a meme denigrating the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, which was shared on X by the owner of this social network, billionaire Elon Musk, and then reshared 86,000 times, was the creation of the Agency for Social Design.

The leaked data, some of which was made public this month as part of a US indictment, was first obtained by German media such as Sueddeutsche Zeitung, NDR and ËDR, which shared it with Schemes and several other media organizations. . They were revealed by an anonymous source, who told reporters that the Agency for Social Design had been hacked.

The Social Design Agency is headed by Ilya Gambashidze, who was hit with sanctions in March by the United States along with his company and associates over the company's influence operation, dubbed Doppelganger.

Gambashidze did not respond to requests for comment prior to publication of this article.

US authorities, who seized 32 Internet domains linked to Doppelganger earlier this month, said the effort was overseen by Sergei Kiriyenko, a senior Kremlin official and confidant of President Vladimir Putin.

In a video presentation included in the leaked documents, Gambashidze addresses the camera wearing a hat emblazoned with the words "Russian ideological troops" and "commander of special forces".

According to the featured video, Gambashidze's team produced 39,899 pieces of content between January and April 2024, including more than 30,000 posts, more than 4,600 videos and memes, and about 1,500 articles.

Among them was a false article made to appear as if it had been published by the German newspaper Bild, where it was claimed that Ukrainian refugees in Germany, in an attempt to burn a Russian flag, had set a German house on fire. which was given to them for shelter.

The influence operation, Schemes found, also produced forged Ukrainian government documents, including a fabricated order purported to have been issued by the country's top military commander, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy, equating surrender by Ukrainian military personnel with treason.

The purpose of the forgery, according to the leaked data, was "to discredit the military-political leadership of Ukraine and demoralize the armed forces."

Leaked documents reveal Russia's campaign to denigrate Ukraine and the EU

The target of this operation was the political landscape of Europe, including the elections for the European Parliament, held in June 2024. The goal was to help the far-right parties which would promote pro-Russian narratives, the revealed data show.

One document suggests "waging a complex counter-campaign against the liberal globalists, their platform and key representatives", including European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, with Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland being the main focus.

The plan included efforts to portray "liberals and globalists" as cowards, including a possible Russian attack on the EU: to portray support for LGBT rights as harmful to children's mental health; to fuel discontent over high inflation and unemployment; and to accuse the "EU globalists" of trying to transform Europe into a "totalitarian military camp...like Ukraine".

Leaked documents reveal Russia's campaign to denigrate Ukraine and the EU

The records also show that the influence operation aimed to increase the electoral fortunes of Germany's far-right party, the Alternative for Germany, and that of the National Rally in France.

Among the goals was to make more than half of German citizens "unwilling to sacrifice their well-being for the sake of defeating Russia" and to promote the narrative that the United States is using Germany in an economic and hybrid war against Russia.

The operation also bombarded Ukrainian state institutions and media with comments through an online network, which produced nearly 34 million comments between January and April 2024, according to an internal document./ Rel